Practicing democratic citizenship in an authoritarian state: grassroots self-governance in urban China

The Chinese state has installed the residents' committee as a form of self-governance organization in each residential area in the cities. It is, however, challenged by the homeowners, a social group that has newly emerged as a result of China's economic liberalization. To protect their own rights, the homeowners created homeowners' committees' as an alternative organizational channel for participation. Moreover, they manage to merge individual homeowners' committees into larger homeowners' associations, thus expanding the site of citizenship practice from the grassroots level as endowed by the state to the civil sphere. When the homeowners act as political actors addressing their collective issues and influence the dynamics of citizenship, they collectively construct a democratic citizenship from below. From this aspect, citizenship in contemporary China is by no means a top-down-created process but is an outcome of the complex interplay between the state's top-down initiation and the citizens' bottom-up construction.